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EDITORIAL: Beacon Hill session ends in a mixed bag

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
08/02/2018 08:24:06 AM EDT

The House and Senate finally wrapped up their sausage-making session early Wednesday, putting an end to the formal session by passing two key pieces of legislation, but also leaving other important bills languishing.

Backers of health-care and education-funding reform were left disappointed by the Legislature's inability to reconcile the different approaches taken in the House and Senate bills.

Both health-care bills sought financial relief for community hospitals. The House's proposal would apply $330 million in new assessments on insurers and large hospitals to help prop up struggling community hospitals.

The Senate version included a "rate floor" for insurance payments to help the hospitals by mandating they be paid at least 90 percent of the average price of a medical service.

We supported the House plan, because the Senate funding mechanism didn't help hospitals with low patient volume. This was a missed opportunity and hopefully it will be reappear next session.

On the positive side, lawmakers approved two key pieces of legislation for opioid addiction treatment and economic development.

The opioid bill provides for assisted addiction treatment in some houses of correction, through a three-year pilot program. Treatment medications will be dispensed to some inmates starting in September 2019. Currently, incarcerated addicts are denied access to the main medications used to treat opioid dependency. The Houses of Correction in Middlesex, including Billerica, are among the pilot facilities.

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Starting in April 2019, the state Department of Corrections must provide the medications at its two women's prisons, MCI Cedar Junction, and a Plymouth treatment program for civilly committed men.

The inmate program, while well-intentioned, bears watching. Several sheriffs have said they're not set up to dispense powerful drugs to inmates who crave them for relief. Ironing out this major concern is crucial and we urge collaboration with state officials.

The opioid law, however, does not include Baker's proposal to give medical professionals the authority to hold addicts against their will for up to 72 hours in a treatment facility, if the person was in danger of harming themselves and others. Lawmakers called for further study instead -- another missed opportunity in our view.

Many other Baker provisions survived, including requiring that all prescribers convert to electronic prescriptions for controlled substances by January 2020.

Retailers and consumers were rewarded in the $1.15 billion jobs bill. It designates the weekend of Aug. 11-12 as a sales tax holiday, which will enable shoppers to make most purchases without having to pay the state's 6.25 percent sales tax.

While lawmakers accomplished much in this session, their procrastination left many bills unnecessarily delayed, and some legislation approved with little or no debate.

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